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hotel."
    "Makes us even," she said. She turned and opened the door.
    " 'Sides," she said over her shoulder, "you got bigger problems than that."
    "Like what?" I shot back.
    She reached into her pocket. Her big red-knuckled hands squeezed a familiar wad of bills.
    "Like payin' the bill, sport. Remember, last time you had one of these Mother Teresa attacks, you gave me all your cash."
6
    "James, Junkin, Rose and Smith."
    "Hi, Charlotte. It's Leo."
    "Leo?" She feigned confusion. "Not the Leo who used to work as a gumshoe hereabouts?"
    "The very same."
    "How's the ass?"
    "It was a hamstring wound," I said. I heard her giggle.
    "What, pray tell, brings your wealthy self out into the tawdry world of commerce?''
    The friendly abuse was to be expected. I hadn't
worked in quite a while. Back in early September, I'd picked up a major
finder's fee when I'd located a homegrown bail jumper named Adrian
Jolley. Adrian and I had played Pop Warner football together during the
rainy fall of my tenth year. He was big for his age but never really
had the stomach for it. While the rest of us were testing our
testosteronic mettle on assorted fields of dreams, Adrian was selling
dime bags over at the grammar school. Few find a calling so early.
    A couple times, when my old man was faced with
something or other so serious he couldn't even send his driver to get
me, Mrs. Jolley had found me standing in the rain, the last one after
practice, waiting for my ride. She'd taken me home with her, let me use
the phone, and fed me incredibly dry peanut butter sandwiches and
mercifully cold milk until the old man could make the proper
arrangements. 
    Faced with a second major drug trafficking
charge and a forty-year stretch of hard time, Adrian Jolley had
liquidated his resources and successfully fled the country. Or so it
was rumored, anyway. Every skip tracer in town had used every
connection he'd owned to try to get a line on the good Mr. Jolley. No
go.
    As for me, I couldn't see any point in reinventing
the wheel. Lots of good men were already doing all the obvious things
and getting nowhere. Besides that, I had this little intuition tweaking
my frontal lobes. I kept seeing the three of us in her kitchen, washing
down those sandwiches, watching the looks that passed between them.
Seeing their entwined arms and braided hands. Sensing their palpable
need for physical contact with each other. Wondering what it would be
like to be that close to either of my parents. Once in a while, I still
wonder. A couple of weeks of replaying that little maternal matinee and
I started calling contractors.
    In the middle of the third day, I had a spasm of
lucidity and called my aunt Karen in the city license department. A
building permit issued to Marlene Jolley? Sure enough. A two-man
general contracting operation up in Lynnwood. Dave and Donnie. Double D
Contracting. Hell, yeah. A complete renovation. Turned a dank basement
into a regular pleasure palace. The old girl spent the better part of
forty grand on the job. Paid in cash too. Probably would have done
better to just sell the place and get something else, but she didn't
want to hear about it. What can we say? Ya gotta do what the customer
wants.
    I took what I had to the King County prosecutor's office. 
    It took them all of forty minutes to muster a search party, coax a warrant out of old Pterodactyl Turner, and get on the road.
    I knocked on the back door, waited, and then
knocked again. Only the smallest movement of the tangerine-colored cafe
curtains suggested habitation.
    "It's Leo Waterman, Mrs. Jolley," I said to the door.
    The three Tac Squad cops pressed harder against the
house as the door began to rattle and move. By the time the door was
open a full inch, the first cop was up the four concrete stairs and
through.
    Unfortunately for Officer McNaughton, despite the
orthopedic shoes, the support hose, and the cherubic countenance,
Marlene Jolley was fast on her feet. Overcome by maternal zeal, she
went